Recently, a semiconductor device in which metal plates are electrically and thermally connected to top and bottom faces of a plurality of semiconductor elements, and the semiconductor elements are sealed with a resin, is known (for example, see Patent Reference No. 1). As one example of such a semiconductor device, a semiconductor device in which semiconductor elements such as insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs), diodes, and so forth, are arranged longitudinally and laterally may be cited.
An IGBT is such that the base of a bipolar transistor is replaced with the gate of a field effect transistor (FET), and has high speed performance and power durability of a bipolar transistor that is driven by a current, and also, power saving performance of a field effect transistor that is driven by a voltage. Therefore, such a semiconductor device can be used as a power semiconductor device that carries out switching operations.